Uh oh, friends - sad brain is back in charge.
Sorry in advance. Though, this isn't really my fault. You can blame scaredofrobots because this was her idea.
He shouldn't have had so much to drink.
He shouldn't have gone at all, but a little socialising with his colleagues wasn't supposed to be a bad thing. It shouldn't have led to him drinking more firewhiskey than he could handle like he was sixteen again and the overindulgence was part of the fun, shouldn't have led to him insisting that he could walk back up to the castle alone.
But there he was.
No one else had been ready to leave yet, he could tell from the way the laughter was still rolling out of them all, the way they were still pouring drinks, and he'd needed to get out of there, but he didn't want to ruin anyone else's night doing it.
He'd known it was a bad idea the moment he let Hagrid pour him a healthy measure of firewhiskey, knew the moment he tasted the stuff — he hadn't had it in years for a reason.
It was just like he remembered.
He'd known that it was going to be difficult being back here — that while he was thankful for the stability and the money and the trust, that every moment back here was going to be difficult. Damn near impossible.
But he got up every day and he walked the halls he knew better than anyone and he taught kids who, sometimes, reminded him far too much of people he was trying to forget. He kept his head down, bit his tongue, pushed down every single thought or memory or feeling he got when he wandered past a particular broom cupboard, heard a particularly loud laugh, saw a particularly messy head of hair.
There was a lot he'd packed away and the stress was weighing on him and so he'd thought, foolishly, that maybe a drink with McG — Minerva and everyone else would help ease things up a bit. Help a few things disappear out of his head. Hopefully erase them permanently.
But of course it hadn't happened like that.
And left to his own drunken devices, apparently, his brain decided that the night's damage wasn't enough. The spice still lingering in the back of his throat from too many firewhiskies, the thoughts that had been swirling around in his mind for the past hour, the quiet of the grounds as he crunched up the gravel drive, a quiet that only existed in the dead of night, a quiet that made him think of all the times he'd been out here and it had been anything but quiet — all of that, apparently, wasn't enough.
He found himself walking towards the lake — he hadn't realised he was doing it at first, but then he knew this place so well that he wouldn't have to think about it to get anywhere on the grounds — and now half of his brain, the sober half, the half that knew he was going to regret this in the morning was screaming at him to turn around, go back, go to bed, go literally anywhere the fuck else, but he kept on. Kept walking.
And then he was sitting down, pressing his back up against the tree, bringing his knees up to his chest, and pretending that he wasn't choking back sobs.
He wished he had another fucking bottle of firewhiskey. Should have bought one off Rosmerta before he left. But that would have felt too familiar, so maybe it was a good idea that he hadn't.
But sitting here — fuck, who cares if the firewhiskey would have been a bad idea. Maybe it would have numbed something, numbed the feeling that was now coursing through him, the one that felt like he was just on the edge of losing control.
He hated feeling like this, like he couldn't — like he couldn't steady himself. Why the fuck was he here?
This was the stupidest thing that he could have done.
That's what he let himself focus on, how much of an idiot he was — when he was thinking about that, how foolish he was for walking down here, for coming here instead of dragging his drunken arse to bed… when he was thinking about that, he wasn't thinking about everything else. He wasn't thinking about how instantly familiar it was to have the beech tree pressing against his back, how he could hear the gentle lapping of the lake against the shore for the first time since he'd been here, how every other time there had been too much noise — laughter and the clinking of glasses and the gentle hiss of cigarettes burning between their lips.
He wasn't thinking about the way they'd laughed at the stories they told, wasn't thinking about the bright flash of the camera she always seemed to have with her, the way she'd made them pose and they way they'd fought her on it every time, wasn't thinking about the way they laid there and stared at the sky and talked about everything they pretended they weren't afraid of.
He wasn't thinking about it. He couldn't fucking think about it.
Because it was too fucking terrible to remember the way that Peter had sat there shaking his head while Lily had laughed from James' lap, shouting at him to just fucking smile already, Remus so that she could take her millionth picture of him, too hard to remember who he was sitting there with, where his hands were, what he was thinking about doing later. He couldn't even picture him in his mind without fucking hating himself because every time, every fucking time, underneath the anger and betrayal and fucking revulsion, there was still that piece of hope that wouldn't die, the bit that wanted to believe that he would never do that, that he'd loved them, that he'd loved him, and that nothing would have convinced him that giving that up would be worth it, that destroying it, destroying everything would be worth it.
It didn't fucking matter what he hoped was true. He knew what was true. No matter how much he didn't like it, no matter how much it hurt to remember, this was the truth.
Sitting here and wishing for things to be different wasn't going to change a damn thing.
Wasn't going to bring them back.
He felt cracks forge themselves in his armor the moment he thought their names, the moment he remembered the look in James' eyes when he'd looked at Lily, the way she'd laughed and shook her head at him, at all of them, the way that Peter had egged them all on because he didn't love anything more than watching them make complete fools of themselves.
He wanted to be able to look back on those moments, to think about them as bits of who they were, to file them in the back of his mind so that he could remember, so that he had something good to hold onto, but every time he thought about it, all he could think about was how young and foolish they were, how they hadn't known, then, that everything was going to be crashing down around them, and not because of any of the things they'd ever talked about or the grand, dramatic schemes they'd concocted, but because of someone they fucking trusted. How everything was going to change so quickly the moment they left school, how everything would be confused and terrifying and all-consuming, how even though they said they wouldn't, the suspicions would start lingering longer in the back of their minds when it became clear that someone was betraying them.
How they only had a few more years left.
How it wasn't enough.
How he, out of all of them, had been the only one to make it out alive and how he absolutely didn't fucking deserve it.
Remus sucked in a sharp, stuttering breath, then, swiped hastily at his eyes. Pushed up off the tree and got to his feet.
He couldn't — he was done. He had to be done. He'd done whatever he'd come here to do and now he needed to be done.
He let himself look for a moment, just a moment longer because he wasn't coming back — let his eyes trace the reflection of the moon in the lake, listened to the light wind blowing through the leaves over his head as he got his bearings.
Eventually, he took another breath, this one deeper, steadier, and he turned on his heel, started walking back up towards the castle.